Archives for February 2016

February 29, 2016 By admingoqii Leave a Comment

Stay Healthy and Save Money

Today’s Union Budget presented by Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley provides for new health protection scheme that will provide health cover up to Rs One lakh per family. And for senior citizens an additional top-up package up to Rs 30,000 will be provided. This is good but, how about staying healthy and reducing health costs once for all.

Lifestyle plays an important role in heart ailments but, perhaps many have not taken this to heart. Getting angioplasties and stents that cost thousands of rupees do not prolong life or prevent heart attacks in stable patients. Similarly, lowering blood sugar with drugs does not fully prevent the economic and human costs of diabetes (including heart attacks, strokes, amputations, impotence, kidney failure, and blindness), but lowering blood sugar with diet and lifestyle prevents all of these human and economic costs.

Bringing about lifestyle changes is easier said than done. Simple lifestyle changes like walking or cycling instead of driving, climbing stairs instead of taking an elevator, eating nutritious food or making dietary changes, exercising on a daily basis and incorporating some behavior modification technique can have a big impact on you and your pocket for the better. And rather than buy a pricey gym membership to get in shape, there are ways to work out on the cheap or choose a fitness tracker with a coach to guide you.

Her are 6 healthy habits that can keep you fit.

Portion Control and Mindful Eating: Watching how much you eat is one of the best ways to maintain your weight. Have smaller portions of food instead of filling your plate in one go and have 5 small meals a day that is healthy and nutritious. This will help you manage your weight, keep your cool, maintain your focus and avoid cravings.
Exercise Daily: The best way to start your day is with some good physical activity. We all know the importance of physical activity, but still only a less percentage of the population in the world follow the same. Exercise has been found to decrease your chances of depression, anxiety, and stress. It is also related to higher success in your career. If you don’t care about your body, every other aspect of your life will suffer. Take care of your body. It is the only place you live.
Have Enough Water: Staying well hydrated is one of our body’s basic needs. Water is needed to enable the body to keep eliminating the toxins generated, to produce digestive enzymes, maintain healthy skin, hair, organs and to help your body absorb essential vitamins, minerals and natural sugars. Water also regulates the body temperature, cooling one down by evaporating through the skin. Drinking at least 3 litres of water a day is a must.
Get A Healthy 7+ Hours of Sleep: Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. Getting enough quality sleep at the right time can help protect your mental and physical health, quality of life, and safety. Sleep is just as important as eating and drinking water. Despite this, millions of people do not sleep enough and experience insane problems as a result. The way you feel while you’re awake depends partly on how you have slept or what kind of sleep you have had. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health.
Think Positive and have a sense of Gratitude: Being positive and thinking positive builds a healthier immune system and boosts overall health. Body believes what you think so think positive. Gratitude is good for our bodies, our minds, and our relationships. Showing gratitude also keeps one happy. Gratitude also blocks toxic and negative emotions and
Avoid Stress: The human body is designed to experience stress and react to it. Here are few things you can do to avoid stress. Namely meditate, deep breathing, be alert, relax, laugh out loud, listen to music, and chase your hobbies.

So let’s stay healthy and save money and rather use that money for things we love to do.

February 29, 2016 By Ruta Satam 1 Comment

From Soul to Sole

Just as clothes are important to cover oneself, Shoes is also important to cover your feet from the hard ground. Lack of a shoe in your feet can cause a lot of wear and tear in the foot tendons, ligaments as well as bones. Additionally, hookworms, a leading cause of disease in developing countries, enter the body through the foot, usually when a person steps in infected dirt. The use of shoes is the best way to prevent infection by hookworms.

Sadly, today a lot of people and children alike from the background walk barefoot, not by choice, but because they cannot afford a pair of shoes or slippers. And then there is this affluent class or fairly privileged class of people who have several pairs of shoes and seldom know what to do with the extra pair that has got old and lying in the corner.

Understanding this disparity and the importance of footwear for one and all, two young lads from Mumbai Shreyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami started Green Sole, a social venture that collects discarded shoes, refurbishes them and makes comfortable footwear for the underprivileged.

The idea is to provide these shoes to the neediest through corporate, NGOs and schools. The seeds of this idea was sowed when Shreyans and Ramesh started running for fitness and ran hundreds of kilo meters every year participating in various Marathons. And through their runs they also lost three to four pairs of sport shoes each year.

They found that the soles were in good condition but, the shoe sides tore within months. The duo wondered if they could find some use for the intact soles of these quality sport shoes. Research led them to the idea of recycling and refurbishing them into trendy slippers. That brainwave eventually spawned an eco-friendly enterprise that reuses shoe soles and is appropriately named “Greensole”.

So far Greesole has distributed over 3000 footwear in Kondana village, Maharashtra and to homeless in Mumbai. There are several corporate entities who are joining this initiative of collecting old shoes and donating them to Greensole.

GOQii haspart of their Karma initiative has partnered with Greensole to provide its users a platform where they can donate their footwear or contribute their karma points towards those individuals who are deprived of a footwear. The idea is walk more to get healthy.

GOQii and Greensole will also be hosting on-ground workshops for GOQii users and provide all those interested an opportunity to lend their hands to make shoes for the under-privileged.

To know more about Greensole, please visit their website http://www.greensole.in/

Reference:

February 25, 2016 By Tejal Gupte 3 Comments

5 tips to eat safe outside your home

Eating outside your home comes as a big relief for most of us especially when we want to have something different from the regular routine “Ghar ka Khana”.

No matter how much we love home cooked food, there comes a point in time when we all crave for outside food even if it is not prepared in the best hygienic way. And well, it’s the first thing foodies like me look forward to do when on holidays or socializing.

Usually,nutritionists and dieticians always emphasize on healthy choices and mindful eating practices while eating out. But sadly, eating healthy i.e non-fatty, low calorie foods alone don’t help to stay healthy and fit. While we pay attention to the fat or sugar content and the processing method of the food while eating out, it’s also equally important to make sure what is served on our plate is safe enough to be consumed.

Failure to adhere to proper safety measures can cause nausea, vomiting, cramps, stomach upset, and in worst case can lead to a serious episode of food poisoning or food borne illness. Thus,a mere act of enjoyment and pleasing the taste buds ends up putting extra stress on our digestive and immune system.

So what’s the alternative? Is there something which can take care of both-the taste buds and our body’s system? The Answer is YES

Here are 5 simple tips which can help us lower the health risk and ensure that the food safety part is not completely ignored!

1) Look for eateries having open kitchen or at least which allows a view of the kitchen

Food safety is all about what goes beyond the scenes i,e inside the kitchen and depends on the person who is cooking as well as the one who is serving the food. Hence, opting for places or restaurant joints that have open kitchen or dining place which allows you to have a view of the kitchen area helps a lot. This will give you some idea of the cleanliness of the kitchen premise, the utensils/equipment and also whether the chef and other kitchen staff are taking care of personal hygiene or not.

2) Go for places/joints which are always crowded or have high visitor ratio

Apart from ensuring that such restaurant is popular and serves tasty food, it will also ensure safer food. This is because crowded places have high turnover of food, and hence chances of getting served stale food reduces (example-the left over gravies and sauces or foods such as cooked rice from previous day).

3) Avoid opting for dishes which are too exotic, off beat or off seasonal

This is largely to play safe as we never know which ingredients go inthe preparation of such foods. Also,it’salways best to avoid dishes which have offseasonal food ingredients say any fruit or vegetable, because storage method of such foods then is a big question?Which if not stored properly as per the protocol can impose a potential risk for food toxicity.

4) Prefer cooked foods over raw or cold foods

This is applicable while eatingin the roadside eateries or joints as they often use food items like chopped onion, peeled potatoes, chutneys etc; which are pre prepared and if not covered and stored properlycan be subjected to contamination from flies, pests etc and thus become a potential health hazard. Opting for cooked foods ensures that at least some microbes get destroyed due to heat.

For example:

#Go for grilled/toasted sandwich instead of regular sandwich

5)Beware of what you eat during buffet set ups

** Avoid having cut salads, cold pastas and fruits in buffet set ups like weddings or in hotels since they are likely to sit there for a long time before they actually go into our plate.We can have soups, grilled/sauteedveggies or steamed starters instead of salads in such situations to fill ourselves and save us from overindulgence.

** Besides this, make sure that all other foods kept at buffet table are maintained at proper temperatures; cold food should be kept cold, hot food should be kept hot when you serve them on your plate.

Remember, next time when you head out just follow these simple tips to make sure you enjoy your time away from the kitchen without thinking of the extra calories or worrying about food poisoning…think good nutrition!!

February 24, 2016 By Shamika Desai 3 Comments

9 Raw Food Diet That Are Tasty And Healthy

I always wondered what is raw food detox diet and how does one eat raw vegetables. Then I found that raw food detox diet is the dietary practice of eating only uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods. It can include raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, organic milk, organic milk yogurt.

In India, most may not be comfortable with a long-term raw diet. However, including raw food in your diet as often as you can surely help. It will help in detoxifying our system.

What is detoxification? Spring cleaning means detoxifying your body, It’s a way to recharge, rejuvenate, and renew. It’s a way you can jump-start your body for a more active life, a healthier life.” There’s no vacuum or mop needed for this little “housekeeping” ritual.

In our body, there is an ongoing detoxification to remove the toxins formed by the food we eat and also through the environment we are exposed to. Our body system is naturally designed to transform the toxins and excrete them out of the body. In order for this to happen naturally, our body should get a break from the regular exposure to processed foods, heavy diets, and environmental pollution.

The raw food is low in calories but contain good amounts of nutrients like vitamins and minerals, antioxidants. It also has high fiber content which eliminates the toxins by managing the bowel movement. The unhealthy diet has been the leading cause of headaches, fatigue, lack of concentration, feeling bloated, indigestion, bad breath etc.

Including a raw diet will surely make you feel more fresh and energetic.

Remember to drink plenty of water when you are on a raw diet. It is the best detox food that you can have. Raw diet helps maintain your weight as well, it also saves your cooking time.

What can one include in Raw Detox diet?

Sprouts Salad

Sprouts have increased nutritious value and easily digestible. Sprouts increase the vitamin and mineral content of the grain and decrease the carbohydrate and calorie content. Basically, any whole legume or grains can be sprouted. Some sprouts have a change in flavor after sprouting.

Avocado Salad.

Avocado is a complete food with lots of nutrients. It is a very versatile fruit as it takes on both sweet and savory taste perfectly. It’s got a buttery texture and hence can be used as a healthy substitute for butter with bread. This salad is very refreshing as an evening snack or as a side with roti. For those people under diet, this makes for a wonderful meal by itself.

Beetroot Pomegranate Juice.

Pomegranates and beetroots, both contain a plentiful amount of antioxidants and nutrients and they are also rich in vitamin C. This colorful root vegetable contains powerful nutrient compounds that help protect against heart disease, birth defects, and certain cancers, especially colon cancer. Beetroot is well known for its blood purifying properties. Due to the rich iron content, it is said to be an indispensable cure for anemia.

Tricolour Fruit Salad (Orange/ Papaya + Kiwi/ Dragon Fruit/ Berries/Tomato’s + Cucumber/ Lichi/ Honey due)

These fruits and vegetables are rich in fiber and loaded with vitamins, minerals and water. It will help you to feel fresh and prevent deficient of the same.

Cranberry Curds Salad

The possible health benefits of consuming cranberries include lowered risk of urinary tract infections, prevention of certain types of cancer, improved immune function, and decreased blood pressure.

Tender Coconut smoothie

Tender coconut water a natural, nutrient-rich isotonic drink. It is high in electrolytes, chlorides, potassium, and magnesium and has a moderate amount of sugar, sodium and protein. It’s also a good source of dietary fiber, manganese, calcium, riboflavin and vitamin C.

Cucumber Juice

Cucumbers contain multiple B vitamins, including vitamin B1, vitamin B5, and vitamin B7 (biotin). B vitamins are known to help ease feelings of anxiety and buffer some of the damaging effects of stress. Cucumbers are rich in two of the most basic elements needed for healthy digestion: water and fiber

Fresh Tomato salads

As an excellent source of the strong antioxidant called Lycopene, vitamin C, and other antioxidants, tomatoes can help combat the formation of free radicals known to cause cancer.

Fresh Fig salads

Figs are high in natural sugars, minerals, and soluble fiber. Figs are rich in minerals including potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and copper and are a good source of antioxidant vitamins A, E and K that contribute to health and wellness.

So, if you have never tried raw food detox diet, now is the time you can start and I am sure you will never regret.